The BioShock series is renowned for its tremendous atmosphere and world building. Everything about the games demonstrates craftsmanship from the graphics to the characters to the story. The music though, is what helps envelop us, as players, in the experience, and for that we have composer Garry Schyman to thank. From the moody, atmospheric "The Docks," to the concert piano piece, "Cohen's Masterpiece," Schyman helped build BioShock into the game-changing experience it was.

With this month's release of BioShock: Infinite, Schyman embarks upon his third entry into the series' wonderful soundtracks. Garry was kind enough to take a moment to answer a few questions about composing for a trilogy and building character.

Jen Bosier: You've been involved with the BioShock series since the beginning. How did you first get involved with the series?

Garry Schyman: I had worked with an audio director named Emily Ridgway on a game called Destroy All Humans. She was very pleased with my work on that project and when she got hired by Irrational Games to become their audio director for BioShock she contacted me and said ‘I really want you to score BioShock’. She described it to me and it sounded amazing. It was really as simple as that.

JB: The previous BioShock installments were set in the mid-20th century, whereas Infinite is set in the early 20th. Does this earlier setting influence the sound of the soundtrack?

GS: Yes, it did. When you set about writing music you try to imagine in your mind what that era and place feels like and how to represent to it musically. I was inspired by the music of that era though I did not imitate it literally. The feeling in Columbia is very different than in Rapture. Columbia is a less complex place at least on the surface. Rapture was a cosmopolitan city at the bottom of the North Atlantic, which was a haven for intellectuals, composers and writers etc. So it is quite a different environment. Certainly the style of popular music at that time was much simpler. That definitely influenced my thinking and the style of the music.

JB: Likewise, the first two games were set in an oppressive underwater environment, and the soundtracks reflected this dark nature ("The Docks" leaps to mind most prominently). Does Infinite's "above the clouds" setting influence the music?

GS: Yes, visually in some respects it is the polar opposite of BioShock which is dark and dank and claustrophobic. Infinite is bright, sunny and with open space, blowing wind and clouds. So visually and environmentally it’s just the opposite and of course that’s going to influence the feel of the music. So yes, the setting is important. Although the caveat is that the characters and the situations I was asked to score are perhaps the most critical elements that influence compositional decisions, still the world of Columbia definitely impacts the sound of the score.

JB: As a series, BioShock's soundtracks have always had an atmospheric, sublime quality that helps bolster the immersive game experience. How do you go about expressing atmosphere, musically?

GS: I don’t know that I think about it that way to be honest. I am writing music that fits a particular scene or moment or activity (like combat). The way one writes music, at least the way I write music, is I’m working on a particular focused piece of music right in front of me, the scene or the setting, the in-game cinematic, whatever it is, so I’m not really thinking of those qualities. I’m really thinking of what music does this moment or in this part of the game need. In some sense all scores are atmospheric. In the end it’s a very intuitive process. Composers need to have an extraordinary intuitive sense of how to compose music that feels right for the visuals our music is accompanying.

JB: BioShock, more than most, has a strong focus on characters both good and bad (Cohen, Elizabeth, etc.). Can you give us some insight into the process behind crafting themes around these characters?

GS: I think it’s the same as you would in a film. You look at who they are and the circumstances that they’re involved in and you’re trying to find music that helps underscore their character and their situation, and maybe find something intuitively deeper in the very essence of that character. It’s really such an intuitive process as I mentioned above, at least for me. I’m not intellectualizing it too greatly, I’m really just thinking, ‘What should this music feel like right now? What should this character’s music represent?’ And I’m intuiting it. I think that’s the most valuable thing a creative person has - their intuition…taking all of your knowledge, your insights and your understanding of music, culture and society, and then really distilling it into a musical idea. It takes place on an inner level of the thinking process that I’m not sure I can even describe but I think we all understand it, that inner voice that is telling us what feels right. Add to that a lot of technique (that I have gathered over the years) writing music for all forms of visual media and you end up with ability to score something that seems to universally achieve your aims.

JB: Can you tell us a little about composing for a series like this? Is it important to maintain certain themes?

GS: Certainly in BioShock 2 the approach was to maintain the style from the first BioShock because you’re in the same location; the style was so successful for that score and so that was part of the direction from the development team. That said I did not literally borrow themes from the first BioShock for BioShock 2. It has all new thematic material but in a similar musical style.

For BioShock Infinite, because it’s so different in content, location time and characters, the direction was to compose something very different and I completely agreed with that approach. You might say I was influenced by the original BioShock score in the sense that I didn’t want it to sound anything like it.

JB: If you had to pick one track that embodies the BioShock Infinite soundtrack, which would it be and why?

GS: Elizabeth’s theme. It was the piece of music that in my mind, and I think in Ken’s mind, was really critical to establishing the direction of the music, the most important parts of the score anyways. Certainly the combat music is great and it’s very powerful I think, but in my mind and Ken’s mind the emotional music that affects characters is more important because it really adds dimension to the whole experience. Elizabeth’s theme is a simple theme performed with just a few stringed instruments, cello and viola. It captured something about her character that really moulded the design for the score and influenced the subsequent cues.

JB: Do you have a particular genre (horror, action, etc.) for which you enjoy composing most?